There are a variety of different types of print media available for use in printing devices. By way of example, there is standard or plain paper print media, photographic quality paper print media, transparency print media, and the like. Many of these different types of print media act differently when liquid ink is applied on their surface. For example, some print media will absorb the liquid ink faster than other types of print media, some print media will be able to absorb more liquid ink than other types of print media, and/or some print media will allow the liquid ink to spread out more than will other types of print media.
With this in mind, many printing devices allow for different user selected print modes. The print modes may be associated with the type of data (e.g., text, graphics, image, etc.) to be printed, the desired quality of the print, and/or the type of print media being used. Some print modes may also take into consideration the type of ink(s) being used. Based on the user selections, the print modes will cause the printing device to follow a predefined “optimal” printing process that best suits the situation.
There is a continuing movement in the printing device community to make the printing devices smarter and more user friendly. As such, some printing devices include automated mechanisms designed to reduce the amount of information that the user is required to know and provide to the printing device and/or its associated software. By way of example, some printing devices include sensing mechanisms that measure light reflected from the blank surface of the print media. Such measurements can be used to characterize the print media as belonging to a certain category of print media. For example, the print media may be considered to be “photographic quality” paper if its surface reflects a lot of light. Accordingly, certain printing process parameters can then be set to achieve the desired image quality in the resulting print.
One of the problems with such automated techniques is that a few different types of print media may exhibit about the same light reflectance. Hence, the automated characterization of the print media may be incorrect or otherwise too broad in scope. Consequently, the resulting printing process may not be correct or optimal for the print media.
Thus, there is a need for methods and apparatuses that can be implemented in a printing device/printing environment to further determine additional print media information and make improved printing process decisions based on the additional print media information.